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As a result of the global financial crisis, international businesses are focussing more on Asia Pacific (APAC) for data center operations but less on the usual suspects such as Singapore and Hong Kong.

Increasing power and cooling requirements driven by the increasing need for high density blade servers is instead placing Malaysia, India and China on site selection maps, where land is less scarce.

Analyst firm Frost & Sullivan highlighted these findings in its Asia Pacific Data Center Services 2010 report, released last week.

It said that it expects the data center services market in APAC to be worth more than US$2.5bn in 2010, and US$9.25bn in 2017.

Frost and Sullivan research analyst Mayank Kapoor said market participants in countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong have been investing in virtualization, consolidation and cloud computing to alleviate cost pressures.

Renewed business expansion efforts in APAC, however, is driving the need for more data center space across the region.  

“Most data centers are working at high utilization levels and service providers are hard pressed to identify the right locations for new data center build outs that provide the required infrastructure, at a sustainable price,” Kapoor said.

“As the outlook for North America and Europe is not very promising, global businesses are focussing their efforts on Asia Pacific to drive the next phase of corporate growth.”

He said the result is more global service providers are looking for operations in Asia Pacific.

“An increasing number of businesses are looking at third-party service providers to supplement or replace their captive facilities,” Kapoor said.

He said future data centers in the areas mentioned above, as a result, are likely to have more focus on Green IT, higher power densities, and will be carrier neutral and built in lower cost locations.

Malaysia currently has four major data center developments underway: CX5 by the CSF Group, the Teliti International site and My Telehaus in Cyberjaya and My Telehaus in Jaya33 technology developments.

India has also had a number of high profile developments in recent weeks, including Tulip Telecoms massive 900,000 sq ft data center.

And China has welcomed some of the largest data center builds in the world in recent years, buoyed by the growth of its own companies, moving into international markets and rising demand for colo and other providers to tap into investment opportunities in the growing economy (read our special report on China from our site selection guide here).